I was sunk in dejected reverie when some one came on the roof.When he was opposite the opening in the tent, I saw Mr. Harbison,and at that moment he saw me. He paused uncertainly, then he madean evident effort and came over to me.

"You are--better today?"

"Quite well, thank you."

"I am glad you find the tent useful. Does it keep off the wind?"

"It is quite a shelter"--frigidly.

He still stood, struggling for something to say. Evidentlynothing came to his mind, for he lifted the cap he was wearing,and turning away, began to work with the wiring of the roof. Hewas clever with tools; one could see that. If he was aprofessional gentleman-burglar, no doubt he needed to be. After abit, finding it necessary to climb to the parapet, he took offhis coat, without even a glance in my direction, and fell to workvigorously.

One does not need to like a man to admire him physically, anymore than one needs to like a race horse or any other splendidanimal. No one could deny that the man on the parapet was asplendid animal; he looked quite big enough and strong enough tohave tossed his slender bridge across the gulf to the next roof,without any difficulty, and coordinate enough to have crossed onit with a flourish to safety.

Just then there was a rending, tearing sound from the corner anda muttered ejaculation. I looked up in time to see Mr. Harbisonthrow up his arms, make a futile attempt to regain his balance,and disappear over the edge of the roof. One instant he wasstanding there, splendid, superb; the next, the corner of theparapet was empty, all that stood there was a broken, splinteredpost and a tangle of wires.

I could not have moved at first; at least, it seemed hours beforethe full significance of the thing penetrated my dazed brain.When I got up I seemed to walk, to crawl, with leaden weightsholding back my feet.

When I got to the corner I had to catch the post for support. Iknew somebody was saying, "Oh, how terrible!" over and over. Itwas only afterward that I knew it had been myself. And then someother voice was saying, "Don't be alarmed. Please don't befrightened. I'm all right."

I dared to look over the parapet, finally, and instead of acrushed and unspeakable body, there was Mr. Harbison, sittingabout eight feet below me, with his feet swinging into space anda long red scratch from the corner of his eye across his cheek.There was a sort of mansard there, with windows, and just enoughcoping to keep him from rolling off.

He did not seem at all glad of his escape. He sat there gloomily,peering into the gulf beneath.

"If it wasn't so--er--messy and generally unpleasant," he repliedwithout looking up, "I would slide off and go the rest of theway."

"You are childish," I said severely. "See if you can get throughthe window behind you. If you can not, I'll come down andunfasten it." But the window was open, and I had a chance to sitdown and gather up the scattered ends of my nerves. To mysurprise, however, when he came back he made no effort to renewour conversation. He ignored me completely, and went to work atonce to repair the damage to his wires, with his back to me.

"I think you are very rude," I said at last. "You fell over thereand I thought you were killed. The nervous shock I experienced isjust as bad as if you had gone--all the way."

He put down the hammer and came over to me without speaking.Then, when he was quite close, he said:

"I am very sorry if I startled you. I did not flatter myself thatyou would be profoundly affected, in any event."

"Oh, as to that," I said lightly, "it makes me ill for days if mycar runs over a dog." He looked at me in silence. "You are notgoing to get up on that parapet again?"

"Mrs. Wilson," he said, without paying the slightest attention tomy question, "will you tell me what I have done?"

"Done?"

"Or have not done? I have racked my brains--stayed awake all oflast night. At first I hoped it was impersonal, that, womanlikeyou were merely venting general disfavor on one particularindividual. But--your hostility is to me, personally."

I raised my eyebrows, coldly interrogative.

"Perhaps," he went on calmly--"perhaps I was a fool here on theroof--the night before last. If I said anything that I shouldnot, I ask your pardon. If it is not that, I think you ought toask mine!"

I was angry enough then.

"There can be only one opinion about your conduct," I retortedwarmly. "It was worse than brutal. It--it was unspeakable. I haveno words for it--except that I loathe it--and you."

He was very grim by this time. "I have heard you say somethinglike that before--only I was not the unfortunate in that case."

"Oh!" I was choking.

"Under different circumstances I should be the last person torecall anything so--personal. But the circumstances are unusual."He took an angry step toward me. "Will you tell me what I havedone? Or shall I go down and ask the others?"

"You wouldn't dare," I cried, "or I will tell them what you did!How you waylaid me on those stairs there, and forced yourcaresses, your kisses, on me! Oh, I could die with shame!"

The silence that followed was as unexpected as it was ominous. Iknew he was staring at me, and I was furious to find myself soemotional, so much more the excited of the two. Finally, I lookedup.

"You can not deny it," I said, a sort of anti-climax.

"No." He was very quiet, very grim, quite composed. "No," herepeated judicially. "I do not deny it."

He did not? Or he would not? Which?

Chapter XIV. ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE

Dal had been acting strangely all day. Once, early in theevening, when I had doubled no trump, he led me a club withoutapology, and later on, during his dummy, I saw him writing ournames on the back of an envelope, and putting numbers after them.At my earliest opportunity I went to Max.

"There is something the matter with Dal, Max," I volunteered."He has been acting strangely all day, and just now he wasmaking out a list--names and numbers."

"You're to blame for that, Kit," Max said seriously. "You putwashing soda instead of baking soda in those biscuits today, andhe thinks he is a steam laundry. Those are laundry lists he'smaking out. He asked me a little while ago if I wanted a domesticfinish."

Yes, I had put washing soda in the biscuits. The book said soda,and how is one to know which is meant?

"I do not think you are calculated for a domestic finish," I saidcoldly as I turned away. "In any case I disclaim any suchresponsibility. But--there is SOMETHING on Dal's mind."

Max came after me. "Don't be cross, Kit. You haven't said a niceword to me today, and you go around bristling with your chin upand two red spots on your cheeks--like whatever-her-name-was withthe snakes instead of hair. I don't know why I'm so crazy aboutyou; I always meant to love a girl with a nice disposition."

I left him then. Dal had gone into the reception room and closedthe doors. And because he had been acting so strangely, andpartly to escape from Max, whose eyes looked threatening, Ifollowed him. Just as I opened the door quietly and looked in,Dallas switched off the lights, and I could hear him groping hisway across the room. Then somebody--not Dal--spoke from thecorner, cautiously.

The flare showed Dallas and Flannigan bent over the timepiece.And it showed something else. The rug had been turned back fromthe windows which opened on the street, and the curtains had beenremoved. On the bare hardwood floor just beneath the windows wasan array of pans of various sizes, dish pans, cake tins, and ametal foot tub. The pans were raised from the floor on bricks,and seemed to be full of paper. All the chairs and tables werepushed back against the wall, and the bric-a-brac was stacked onthe mantel.

"Half an hour yet," Dal said, closing his watch. "Plenty of time,and remember the signal, four short and two long."

"Four short and two long--all right, sir."

"And--Flannigan, here's something for you, on account."

"Thank you, sir."

Dal turned to go out, tripped over the rug, said something, andpassed me without an idea of my presence. A moment laterFlannigan went out, and I was left, huddled against the wall, andalone.

It was puzzling enough. "Four long and two short!" "All but thepowder!" Not that I believed for a moment what Max had said, andanyhow Flannigan was the sanest person I ever saw in my life. Butit all seemed a part of the mystery that had been hanging over usfor several days. I felt my way across the room and knelt by thepans. Yes, they were there, full of paper and mounted on bricks.It had not been a delusion.

And then I straightened on my knees suddenly, for an automobilepassing under the windows had sounded four short honks and twolong ones. The signal was followed instantly by a crash. The footbath had fallen from its supports, and lay, quivering andvibrating with horrid noises at my feet. The next moment Mr.Harbison had thrown open the door and leaped into the room.

"Who's there?" he demanded. Against the light I could see himreaching for his hip pocket, and the rest crowding up around him.

"It's only me," I quavered, "that is, I. The--the dish panupset."

"Dish pan!" Bella said from back in the crowd. "Kit, of course!"

Jim forced his way through then and turned on the lights. I haveno doubt I looked very strange, kneeling there on the bare floor,with a row of pans mounted on bricks behind me, and the furnitureall piled on itself in a back corner.

"Kit! What in the world--!" Jim began, and stopped. He staredfrom me to the pans, to the windows, to the bric-a-brac on themantel, and back to me.

I sat stonily silent. Why should I explain? Whenever I got into afoolish position, and tried to explain, and tell how it happened,and who was really to blame, they always brought it back to MEsomehow. So I sat there on the floor and let them stare. Andfinally Lollie Mercer got her breath and said, "How perfectlylovely; it's a charade!"

And Anne guessed "kitchen" at once. "Kit, you know, and the pansand--all that," she said vaguely. At that they all took toguessing! And I sat still, until Mr. Harbison saw the storm in myeyes and came over to me.

"Have you hurt your ankle?" he said in an undertone. "Let me helpyou up."

"I am not hurt," I said coldly, "and even if I were, it would beunnecessary to trouble you."

"I can not help being troubled," he returned, just as evenly."'You see, it makes me ill for days if my car runs over a dog.'"

Luckily, at that moment Dal came in. He pushed his way throughthe crowd without a word, shut off the lights, crashed throughthe pans and slammed the shutters closed. Then he turned andaddressed the rest.

"Of all the lunatics--!" he began, only there was more to it thanthat. "A fellow goes to all kinds of trouble to put an end tothis miserable situation, and the entire household turns out andsets to work to frustrate the whole scheme. You LIKE to stayhere, don't you, like chickens in a coop? Where's Flannigan?"

Nobody understood Dal's wrath then, but it seems he meant toarrange the plot himself, and when it was ripe, and the hournearly come, he intended to wager that he could break thequarantine, and to take any odds he could get that he would freethe entire party in half an hour. As for the plan itself, it wasidiotically simple; we were perfectly delighted when we heard it.It was so simple and yet so comprehensive. We didn't see how itCOULD fail. Both the Mercer girls kissed Dal on the strength ofit, and Anne was furious. Jim was not so much pleased, for somereason or other, and Mr. Harbison looked thoughtful rather thanmerry. Aunt Selina had gone to bed.

The idea, of course, was to start an embryo fire just inside thewindows, in the pans, to feed it with the orange-fire powder thatis used on the Fourth of July, and when we had thrown open thewindows and yelled "fire" and all the guards and reporters hadrushed to the front of the house, to escape quietly by a reardoor from the basement kitchen, get into machines Dal had inwaiting, and lose ourselves as quickly as we could.

You can see how simple it was.

We were terribly excited, of course. Every one rushed madly formotor coats and veils, and Dal shuffled the numbers so the peoplegoing the same direction would have the same machine. We calledto each other as we dressed about Mamaroneck or Lakewood orwherever we happened to have relatives. Everybody knew everybodyelse, and his friends. The Mercer girls were going to cruiseuntil the trouble blew over, the Browns were going to Pinehurst,and Jim was going to Africa to hunt, if he could get out of theharbor.

Only the Harbison man seemed to have no plans; quite suddenlywith the world so near again, the world of country houses andsteam yachts and all the rest of it, he ceased to be one of us.It was not his world at all. He stood back and watched thekaleidoscope of our coats and veils, half-quizzically, but withsomething in his face that I had not seen there before. If he hadnot been so self-reliant and big, I would have said he waslonely. Not that he was pathetic in any sense of the word. Ofcourse, he avoided me, which was natural and exactly what Iwished. Bella never was far from him and at the last she loadedhim with her jewel case and a muff and traveling bag and askedhim to her cousins' on Long Island. I felt sure he was going todecline, when he glanced across at me.

It was a transparent plot on Bella's part: Two elderly maidenladies, house miles from anywhere, long evenings in the musicroom with an open fire and Bella at the harp playing the twosongs she knows.

When we were ready and gathered in the kitchen, in the darkness,of course, Dal went up on the roof and signaled with a lantern tothe cars on the drive. Then he went downstairs, took a last lookat the drawing room, fired the papers, shook on the powder,opened the windows and yelled "fire!"

Of course, huddled in the kitchen we had heard little or nothing.But we plainly heard Dal on the first floor and Flannigan on thesecond yelling "fire," and the patter of feet as the guards ranto the front of the house. And at that instant we remembered AuntSelina!

That was the cause of the whole trouble. I don't know why theyturned on me; she wasn't my aunt. But by the time we had got herout of bed, and had wrapped her in an eiderdown comfort, andstuck slippers on her feet and a motor veil on her head, theglare at the front of the house was beginning to die away. Shedidn't understand at all and we had no time to explain. Iremember that she wanted to go back and get her "plate," whateverthat may be, but Jim took her by the arm and hurried her along,and the rest, who had waited, and were in awful tempers, stoodaside and let them out first.

The door to the area steps was open, and by the street lights wecould see a fence and a gate, which opened on a side street. Jimand Aunt Selina ran straight for the gate; the wind blowing AuntSelina's comfort like a sail. Then, with our feet, so to speak,on the first rungs of the ladder of Liberty, it slipped. Ahalf-dozen guards and reporters came around the house and droveus back like sheep into a slaughter pen. It was the mosthumiliating moment of my life.

Dal had been for fighting a way through, and just for a minute Ithink I went Berserk myself. But Max spied one of the reporterssetting up a flash light as we stood, undecided, at the top ofthe steps, and after that there was nothing to do but retreat. Webacked down slowly, to show them we were not afraid. And when wewere all in the kitchen again, and had turned on the lights andBella was crying with her head against Mr. Harbison's arm, Dalsaid cheerfully,

"Well, it has done some good, anyhow. We have lost Aunt Selina."

And we all shook hands on it, although we were sorry about Jim.And Dal said we would have some champagne and drink to AuntSelina's comfort, and we could have her teeth fumigated and sendthem to her. Somebody said "Poor old Jim," and at that Bellalooked up.

She stared around the group, and then she went quite pale.

"Jim!" she gasped. "Do you mean--that Jim is--out there too?"

"Jim and Aunt Selina!" I said as calmly as I could for joy. Youcan see how it simplified the situation for me. "By this timethey are a mile away, and going!"

Everybody shook hands again except Bella. She had dropped into achair, and sat biting her lip and breathing hard, and she wouldnot join in any of the hilarity at getting rid of Aunt Selina.Finally she got up and knocked over her chair.

"You are a lot of cowards," she stormed. "You deserted them outthere, left them. Heaven knows where they are--a defenseless oldwoman, and--and a man who did not even have an overcoat. And itis snowing!"

"Never mind," Dal said reassuringly. "He can borrow Aunt Selina'scomfort. Make the old lady discard from weakness. Anyhow, Bella,if I know anything of human nature, the old lady will make it hotenough for him. Poor old Jim!"

Then they shook hands again, and with that there came a terriblebanging at the door, which we had locked.

Dallas put his hands in his pockets, seated himself on the table,and whistled cheerfully. We could hear them conferring outside,and they made another appeal which was refused. Suddenly Bellacame over and confronted Dallas.

"They have brought them back!" she said dramatically. "They areout there now; I distinctly heard Jim's voice. Open that door,Dallas!"

"Oh, DON'T let them in!" I wailed. It was quite involuntary, butthe disappointment was too awful. "Dallas, DON'T open that door!"

Dal swung his feet and smiled from Bella to me.

"Think what a solution it is to all our difficulties," he saideasily. "Without Aunt Selina I could be happy here indefinitely."

There was more knocking, and somebody--Max, I think--said to letthem in, that it was a fool thing anyhow, and that he wanted togo to bed and forget it; his feet were cold. And just then therewas a crash, and part of one of the windows fell in. The nextblow from outside brought the rest of the glass, and--somebodywas coming through, feet first. It was Jim.

He did not speak to any of us, but turned and helped in a bundleof red and yellow silk comfort that proved to be Aunt Selina,also feet first. I had a glimpse of a half-dozen heads outside,guards and reporters. Then Jim jerked the shade down andunswathed Aunt Selina's legs so that she could walk, offered hisarm, and stalked past us and upstairs, without a word!

None of us spoke. We turned out the lights and went upstairs andtook off our wraps and went to bed. It had been almost a fiasco.

Chapter XV. SUSPICION AND DISCORD

Every one was nasty the next morning. Aunt Selina declared thather feet were frost-bitten and kept Bella rubbing them with icewater all morning. And Jim was impossible. He refused to speak toany of us and he watched Bella furtively, as if he suspected herof trying to get him out of the house.

When luncheon time came around and he had shown no indication ofgoing to the telephone and ordering it, we had a conclave, andMax was chosen to remind him of the hour. Jim was shut in thestudio, and we waited together in the hall while Max went up.When he came down he was somewhat ruffled.

"He wouldn't open the door, he reported, "and when I told him itwas meal time, he said he wasn't hungry, and he didn't give awhoop about the rest of us. He had asked us here to dinner; hehadn't proposed to adopt us."

So we finally ordered luncheon ourselves, and about two o'clockJim came downstairs sheepishly, and ate what was left. Annedeclared that Bella had been scolding him in the upper hall, butI doubted it. She was never seen to speak to him unnecessarily.

The excitement of the escape over, Mr. Harbison and I remained onterms of armed neutrality. And Max still hunted for Anne'spearls, using them, the men declared, as a good excuse to avoidtinkering with the furnace or repairing the dumb waiter, whichtook the queerest notions, and stopped once, half-way up from thekitchen, for an hour, with the dinner on it. Anyhow, Max wassearching the house systematically, armed with a copy of Poe'sPurloined Letter and Gaboriau's Monsieur LeCoq. He went throughthe seats of the chairs with hatpins, tore up the beds, andlifted rugs, until the house was in a state of confusion. And thenext day, the fourth, he found something--not much, but it wascurious. He had been in the studio, poking around behind thedusty pictures, with Jimmy expostulating every time he movedanything and the rest standing around watching him.

Max was strutting.

"We get it by elimination," he said importantly. "The pearlsbeing nowhere else in the house, they must be here in the studio.Three parts of the studio having yielded nothing, they must be inthe fourth. Ladies and gentlemen, let me have your attention forone moment. I tap this canvas with my wand--there is nothing upmy sleeve. Then I prepare to move the canvas--so. And I put myhand in the pocket of this disreputable velvet coat, so. Behold!"

Then he gave a low exclamation and looked at something he held inhis hand. Every one stepped forward, and on his palm was thesmall diamond clasp from Anne's collar!

Jimmy was apoplectic. He tried to smile, but no one else did.

"Well, I'll be flabbergasted!" he said. "I say, you people, youdon't think for a minute that I put that thing there? Why, Ihaven't worn that coat for a month. It's--it's a trick of yours,Max."

But Max shook his head; he looked stupefied, and stood gazingfrom the clasp to the pocket of the old painting coat. Bettydropped on a folding stool, that promptly collapsed with her andcreated a welcome diversion, while Anne pounced on the claspgreedily, with a little cry.

"We will find it all now," she said excitedly. "Did you look inthe other pockets, Max?"

Then, for the first time, I was conscious of an air of constraintamong the men. Dallas was whistling softly, and Mr. Harbison,having rescued Betty, was standing silent and aloof, watching thescene with non-committal eyes. It was Max who spoke first, aftera hurried inventory of the other pockets.

"Nothing else," he said constrainedly. "I'll move the rest of thecanvases."

But Jim interfered, to every one's surprise.

"I wouldn't, if I were you, Max. There's nothing back there. Ihad em out yesterday." He was quite pale.

"The pearls are not there, I tell you," Jim began. Although thestudio was cold, there were little fine beads of moisture on hisface. "I must ask you not to move those pictures." And then AuntSelina came to the rescue; she stalked over and stood with herback against the stack of canvases.

"As far as I can understand this," she declaimed, "you gentlemenare trying to intimate that James knows something of that youngwoman's jewelry, because you found part of it in his pocket.Certainly you will not move the pictures. How do you know thatthe young gentleman who said he found it there didn't have it uphis sleeve?"

She looked around triumphantly, and Max glowered. Dallas soothedher, however.

"Exactly so," he said. "How do we know that Max didn't have theclasp up his sleeve? My dear lady, neither my wife nor I careanything for the pearls, as compared with the priceless pearl ofpeace. I suggest tea on the roof; those in favor--? My arm, MissCaruthers."

It was all well enough for Jim to say later that he didn't dareto have the canvases moved, for he had stuck behind them allsorts of chorus girl photographs and life-class crayons that werenot for Aunt Selina's eye, besides four empty siphons, two fullones, and three bottles of whisky. Not a soul believed him; therewas a a new element of suspicion and discord in the house.

Every one went up on the roof and left him to his mystery. Annedrank her tea in a preoccupied silence, with half-closed eyes, anattitude that boded ill to somebody. The rest were feverishlygay, and Aunt Selina, with a pair of arctics on her feet and ahot-water bottle at her back, sat in the middle of the tent andtold me familiar anecdotes of Jimmy's early youth (had he known,he would have slain her). Betty and Mr. Harbison had found amedicine ball, and were running around like a pair of children.It was quite certain that neither his escape from death nor myaccusation weighed heavily on him.

While Aunt Selina was busy with the time Jim had swallowed anopen safety pin, and just as the pin had been coughed up, ortaken out of his nose--I forget which--Jim himself appeared andsulkily demanded the privacy of the roof for his training hour.

Yes, he was training. Flannigan claimed to know the system thathad reduced the president to what he is, and he and Jim had aseance every day which left Jim feeling himself for bruises allevening. He claimed to be losing flesh; he said he could actuallyfeel it going, and he and Flannigan had spent an entire afternoonin the cellar three days before with a potato barrel, acane-seated chair and a lamp.

The whole thing had been shrouded in mystery. They sandpaperedthe inside of the barrel and took out all the nails, and whenthey had finished they carried it to the roof and put it in acorner behind the tent. Everybody was curious, but Flanniganrefused any information about it, and merely said it was part ofhis system. Dal said that if HE had anything like that in hissystem he certainly would be glad to get rid of it.

At a quarter to six Jim appeared, still sullen from the events ofthe afternoon and wearing a dressing gown and a pair of slippers,Flannigan following him with a sponge, a bucket of water and anarmful of bath towels. Everybody protested at having to move, buthe was firm, and they all filed down the stairs. I was the last,with Aunt Selina just ahead of me. At the top of the stairs, sheturned around suddenly to me.

"That policeman looks cruel," she said. "What's more, he's beenin a bad humor all day. More than likely he'll put James flat onthe roof and tramp on him, under pretense of training him. Allpolicemen are inhuman."

"He only rolls him over a barrel or something like that," Iprotested.

"James had a bump like an egg over his ear last night," AuntSelina insisted, glaring at Flannigan's unconscious back. "Idon't think it's safe to leave him. It is my time to relax forthirty minutes, or I would watch him. You will have to stay," shesaid, fixing me with her imperious eyes.

So I stayed. Jim didn't want me, and Flannigan muttered mutiny.But it was easier to obey Aunt Selina than to clash with her, andanyhow I wanted to see the barrel in use.

I never saw any one train before. It is not a joyful spectacle.First, Flannigan made Jim run, around and around the roof. Hesaid it stirred up his food and brought it in contact with hisliver, to be digested.

Flannigan, from meekness and submission, of a sort, in thekitchen, became an autocrat on the roof.

"Once more," he would say. "Pick up your feet, sir! Pick up yourfeet!"

And Jim would stagger doggedly past me, where I sat on theparapet, his poor cheeks shaking and the tail of his bath robewrapping itself around his legs. Yes, he ran in the bath robe indeference to me. It seems there isn't much to a running suit.

He let him stop finally, and gave him a moment to get his breath.Then he set him to turning somersaults. They spread the cushionsfrom the couch in the tent on the roof, and Jim would poke hishead down and say a prayer, and then curve over as gracefully asa sausage and come up gasping, as if he had been pushed off aboat.

"Five pounds a day; not less, sir," Flannigan said encouragingly."You'll drop it in chunks."

Jim looked at the tin as if he expected to see the chunks lyingat his feet.

"Yes," he said, wiping the back of his neck. "If we're in herethirty days that will be one hundred and fifty pounds. Don'tforget to stop in time, Flannigan. I don't want to melt away likea candle."

He was cheered, however, by the promise of reduction.

"What do you think of that, Kit?" he called to me. "Your uncle isgoing to look as angular as a problem in geometry. I'll--I'll bethe original reductio ad absurdum. Do you want me to stand on myhead, Flannigan? Wouldn't that reduce something?"

"Do you know, Flannigan," he remarked, as he fastened them, "I'mthinking of wearing these all the time. They hide my character."

Flannigan looked puzzled, but he did not ask an explanation. Hedemanded that Jim shed the bath robe, which he finally did, on mypromise to watch the sunset. Then for fully a minute there was nosound save of feet running rapidly around the roof, and anoccasional soft thud. Each thud was accompanied by a grunt or twofrom Jim. Flannigan was grimly silent. Once there was a smartrap, an oath from the policeman, and a mirthless chuckle fromJim. The chuckle ended in a crash, however, and I turned. Jim waslying on his back on the roof, and Flannigan was wiping his earwith a towel. Jim sat up and ran his hand down his ribs.

"They're all here," he observed after a minute. "I thought Imissed one."

"The only way to take a man's weight down," Flannigan said dryly.

Jim got up dizzily.

"Down on the roof, I suppose you mean," he said.

The next proceedings were mysterious. Flannigan rolled the barrelinto the tent, and carried in a small glass lamp. With thematerial at hand he seemed to be effecting a combination, no newone, to judge by his facility. Then he called Jim.

At the door of the tent Jim turned to me, his bathrobe togafashion around his shoulders.

"This is a very essential part of the treatment," he saidsolemnly. "The exercise, according to Flannigan, loosens up theadipose tissue. The next step is to boil it out. I hope, unlessyour instructions compel you, that you will at least have thedecency to stay out of the tent."

"I am going at once," I said, outraged. "I'm not here because I'mmad about it, and you know it. And don't pose with that bathrobe. If you think you're a character out of Roman history, lookat your legs."

"I didn't mean to offend you," he said sulkily. "Only I'm tiredof having you choked down my throat every time I open my mouth,Kit. And don't go just yet. Flannigan is going for my clothes assoon as he lights the--the lamp, and--somebody ought to watch thestairs."

That was all there was to it. I said I would guard the steps, andFlannigan, having ignited the combination, whatever it was, wentdownstairs. How was I to know that Bella would come up when shedid? Was it my fault that the lamp got too high, and thatFlannigan couldn't hear Jim calling? Or that just as Bellareached the top of the steps Jim should come to the door of thetent, wearing the barrel part of his hot-air cabinet, and yellingfor a doctor?

Bella came to a dead stop on the upper step, with her mouth open.She looked at Jim, at the inadequate barrel, and from them shelooked at me. Then she began to laugh, one of her hystericalgiggles, and she turned and went down again. As Jim and I staredat each other we could hear her gurgling down the hall below.

She had violent hysterics for an hour, with Anne rubbing herforehead and Aunt Selina burning a feather out of the featherduster under her nose. Only Jim and I understood, and we did nottell. Luckily, the next thing that occurred drove Bella and hernerves from everybody's mind.

At seven o'clock, when Bella had dropped asleep and everybodyelse was dressed for dinner, Aunt Selina discovered that thehouse was cold, and ordered Dal to the furnace.

It was Dal's day at the furnace; Flannigan had been relieved ofthat part of the work after twice setting fire to a chimney.

In five minutes Dal came back and spoke a few words to Max, whofollowed him to the basement, and in ten minutes more Flanniganpuffed up the steps and called Mr. Harbison.

I am not curious, but I knew that something had happened. WhileAunt Selina was talking suffrage to Anne--who said she had alwaysbeen tremendously interested in the subject, and if women got thesuffrage would they be allowed to vote?--I slipped back to thedining room.

The table was laid for dinner, but Flannigan was not in sight. Icould hear voices from somewhere, faint voices that talkedrapidly, and after a while I located the sounds under my feet.The men were all in the basement, and something must havehappened. I flew back to the basement stairs, to meet Mr.Harbison at the foot. He was grimy and dusty, with streaks ofcoal dust over his face, and he had been examining his revolver.I was just in time to see him slip it into his pocket.

"What is the matter?" I demanded. "Is any one hurt?

"No one," he said coolly. "We've been cleaning out the furnace."

"With a revolver! How interesting--and unusual!" I said dryly,and slipped past him as he barred the way. He was not pleased; Iheard him mutter something and come rapidly after me, but I hadthe voices as a guide, and I was not going to be turned back likea child. The men had gathered around a low stone arch in thefurnace room, and were looking down a short flight of steps, intoa sort of vault, evidently under the pavement. A faint light camefrom a small grating above, and there was a close, musty smell inthe air.

"I tell you it must have been last night," Dallas was saying."Wilson and I were here before we went to bed, and I'll swearthat hole was not there then."

"It was not there this morning, sir," Flannigan insisted. "It hasbeen made during the day."

"And it could not have been done this afternoon," Mr. Harbisonsaid quietly. "I was fussing with the telephone wire down here. Iwould have heard the noise."

Something in his voice made me look at him, and certainly hisexpression was unusual. He was watching us all intently whileDallas pointed out to me the cause of the excitement. From themain floor of the furnace room, a flight of stone stepssurmounted by an arch led into the coal cellar, beneath thestreet. The coal cellar was of brick, with a cement floor, and inthe left wall there gaped an opening about three feet by three,leading into a cavernous void, perfectly black--evidently asimilar vault belonging to the next house.

The whole place was ghostly, full of shadows, shivery withpossibilities. It was Mr. Harbison finally who took Jim's candleand crawled through the aperture. We waited in dead silence,listening to his feet crunching over the coal beyond, watchingthe faint yellow light that came through the ragged opening inthe wall. Then he came back and called through to us.

"Place is locked, over here," he said. "Heavy oak door at thehead of the steps. Whoever made that opening has done aprodigious amount of labor for nothing."

The weapon, a crowbar, lay on the ground beside the bricks, andhe picked it up and balanced it on his hand. Dallas' florid facewas almost comical in his bewilderment; as for Jimmy--he slammeda piece of slag at the furnace and walked away. At the door heturned around.

"Why don't you accuse me of it?" he asked bitterly. "Maybe youcould find a lump of coal in my pockets if you searched me."

He stalked up the stairs then and left us. Dallas and I went uptogether, but we did not talk. There seemed to be nothing to say.Not until I had closed and locked the door of my room did Iventure to look at something that I carried in the palm of myhand. It was a watch, not running--a gentleman's flat gold watch,and it had been hanging by its fob to a nail in the bricks besidethe aperture.

In the back of the watch were the initials, T.H.H. and thepicture of a girl, cut from a newspaper.

It was my picture.

Chapter XVI. I FACE FLANNIGAN

Dinner waited that night while everybody went to the coal cellarand stared at the hole in the wall, and watched while Max took atracing of it and of some footprints in the coal dust on theother side.

I did not go. I went into the library with the guilty watch inthe fold of my gown, and found Mr. Harbison there, staringthrough the February gloom at the blank wall of the next house,and quite unconscious of the reporter with a drawing pad justbelow him in the area-way. I went over and closed the shuttersbefore his very eyes, but even then he did not move.

"Will you be good enough to turn around?" I demanded at last.

"Oh!" he said wheeling. "Are YOU here?"

There wasn't any reply to that, so I took the watch and placed iton the library table between us. The effect was all that I hadhoped. He stared at it for an instant, then at me, and with hishand outstretched for it, stopped.

"Where did you find it?" he asked. I couldn't understand hisexpression. He looked embarrassed, but not at all afraid.

"I think you know, Mr. Harbison," I retorted.

"I wish I did. You opened it?"

"Yes."

We stood looking at each other across the table. It was hisglance that wavered.

"About the picture--of you," he said at last. "You see, downthere in South America, a fellow hasn't much to do in theevenings, and a--a chum of mine and I--we were awfully down onwhat we called the plutocrats, the--the leisure classes. And whenthat picture of yours came in the paper, we had--we had anargument. He said--" He stopped.

"What did he say?"

"Well, he said it was the picture of an empty-faced societygirl."

"Oh!" I exclaimed.

"I--I maintained there were possibilities in the face." He putboth hands on the table, and, bending forward, looked down at me."Well, I was a fool, I admit. I said your eyes were kind andcandid, in spite of that haughty mouth. You see, I said I was afool."

"I think you are exceedingly rude," I managed finally. "If youwant to know where I found your watch, it was down in the coalcellar. And if you admit you are an idiot, I am not. I--I knowall about Bella's bracelet--and the board on the roof, and--oh,if you would only leave--Anne's necklace--on the coal, orsomewhere--and get away--"

My voice got beyond me then, and I dropped into a chair andcovered my face. I could feel him staring at the back of my head.

"Well, I'll be--" something or other, he said finally, and thenhe turned on his heel and went out. By the time I got my eyes dry(yes, I was crying; I always do when I am angry) I heard Jimcoming downstairs, and I tucked the watch out of sight. Wouldanyone have foreseen the trouble that watch would make!

Jim was sulky. He dropped into a chair and stretched out hislegs, looking gloomily at nothing. Then he got up and ambled intohis den, closing the door behind him without having spoken aword. It was more than human nature could stand.

When I went into the den he was stretched on the davenport withhis face buried in the cushions. He looked absolutely wilted, andevery line of him was drooping.

"Go on out, Kit," he said, in a smothered voice. "Be a good girland don't follow me around."

"You are shameless!" I gasped. "Follow you! When you are hungaround my neck like a--like a--" Millstone was what I wanted tosay, but I couldn't think of it.

He turned over and looked up from his cushions like anill-treated and suffering cherub.

"I'm done for, Kit," he groaned. "Bella went up to the studioafter we left, and investigated that corner."

"What did she find? The necklace?" I asked eagerly. He was toowretched to notice this.

"No, that picture of you that I did last winter. She iscrazy--she says she is going upstairs and sit in Takahiro's roomand take smallpox and die."

"Fiddlesticks!" I said rudely, and somebody hammered on the doorand opened it.

It was eight o'clock by that time, and as it took an hour atleast after telephoning the order, everybody looked blank whenthey heard. The entire family, except Mr. Harbison, who had notappeared again, escorted Jim to the telephone and hung aroundhungrily, suggesting new dishes every minute. And then--hecouldn't raise Central. It was fifteen minutes before we gave up,and stood staring at one another despairingly.

"Call out of a window, and get one of those infernal reporters todo something useful for once," Max suggested. But he wasindignantly hushed. We would have starved first. Jim was peeringinto the transmitter and knocking the receiver against his hand,like a watch that had stopped. But nothing happened. Flanniganreported a box of breakfast food, two lemons, and a pineapplecheese, a combination that didn't seem to lend itself toanything.

We went back to the dining room from sheer force of habit and sataround the table and looked at the lemonade Flannigan had made.Anne WOULD talk about the salad her last cook had concocted, andMax told about a little town in Connecticut where the restaurantkeeper smokes a corn-cob pipe while he cooks the most lusciousfried clams in America. And Aunt Selina related that in herfamily they had a recipe for chicken smothered in cream. And thenwe sipped the weak lemonade and nibbled at the cheese.

"To change this gridiron martyrdom," Dallas said finally,"where's Harbison? Still looking for his watch?"

"Watch!" Everybody said it in a different tone.

"Sure," he responded. "Says his watch was taken last night fromthe studio. Better get him down to take a squint at thetelephone. Likely he can fix it."

Flannigan was beside me with the cheese. And at that moment Ifelt Mr. Harbison's stolen watch slip out of my girdle, slidegreasily across my lap, and clatter to the floor. Flanniganstooped, but luckily it had gone under the table. To have had itpicked up, to have had to explain how I got it, to see them tryto ignore my picture pasted in it--oh, it was impossible! I putmy foot over it.

"A fork," I said, as easily as I could, and the conversation wenton. But Flannigan knew, and I knew he knew. He watched my everymovement like a hawk after that, standing just behind my chair. Idropped my useless napkin, to have it whirled up before itreached the floor. I said to Betty that my shoe buckle was loose,and actually got the watch in my hand, only to let it slip at thecritical moment. Then they all got up and went sadly back to thelibrary, and Flannigan and I faced each other.

Flannigan was not a handsome man at any time, though up to thenhe had at least looked amiable. But now as I stood with my handon the back of my chair, his face grew suddenly menacing. Thesilence was absolute. I was the guiltiest wretch alive, andopposite me the law towered and glowered, and held the yellowremnant of a pineapple cheese! And in the silence that wretchedwatch lay and ticked and ticked and ticked. Then Flannigancreaked over and closed the door into the hall, came back, pickedup the watch, and looked at it.

"I don't know what you mean," I quavered. "Give me that watch toreturn to Mr. Harbison."

"Not on your life," he retorted easily. "I give it back myself,like I did the bracelet, and--like I'm going to give back thenecklace, if you'll act like a sensible little girl."

I could only choke.

"It's foolish, any way you look at it," he persisted. "here youare, lots of friends, folks that think you're all right. Why, Ireckon there isn't one of them that wouldn't lend you money ifyou needed it so bad."

"Will you be still?" I said furiously. "Mr. Harbison left thatwatch--with me--an hour ago. Get him, and he will tell you sohimself!"

"Of course he would," Flannigan conceded, looking at me withgrudging approval. "He wouldn't be what I think he is, if hedidn't lie up and down for you." There were voices in the hall.Flannigan came closer. "An hour ago, you say. And he told me itwas gone this morning! It's a losing game, miss. I'll give youtwenty-four hours and then--the necklace, if you please, miss."

Chapter XVII. A CLASH AND A KISS

The clash that came that evening had been threatening for sometime. Take an immovable body, represented by Mr. Harbison and hissquare jaw, and an irresistible force, Jimmy and his weight, andthere is bound to be trouble.

The real fault was Jim's. He had gone entirely mad again overBella, and thrown prudence to the winds. He mooned at her acrossthe dinner table, and waylaid her on the stairs or in the backhalls, just to hear her voice when she ordered him out of herway. He telephoned for flowers and candy for her quiteshamelessly, and he got out a book of photographs that they hadtaken on their wedding journey, and kept it on the library table.The sole concession he made to our presumptive relationship wasto bring me the responsibility for everything that went wrong,and his shirts for buttons.

The first I heard of the trouble was from Dal. He waylaid me inthe hall after dinner that night, and his face was serious.

"I'm afraid we can't keep it up very long, Kit," he said. "WithJim trailing Bella all over the house, and the old lady keenerevery day, it's bound to come out somehow. And that isn't all.Jim and Harbison had a set-to today--about you."

"About me!" I repeated. "Oh, I dare say I have been falling shortagain. What was Jim doing? Abusing me?"

Dal looked cautiously over his shoulder, but no one was near.

"It seems that the gentle Bella has been unusually beastly todayto Jim, and--I believe she's jealous of you, Kit. Jim followedher up to the roof before dinner with a box of flowers, and shetossed them over the parapet. She said, I believe, that shedidn't want his flowers; he could buy them for you, and be damnedto him, or some lady-like equivalent."

"Jim is a jellyfish," I said contemptuously. "What did he say?"

"He said he only cared for one woman, and that was Bella; that henever had really cared for you and never would, and that divorcecourts were not unmitigated evils if they showed people the wayto real happiness. Which wouldn't amount to anything if Harbisonhad not been in the tent, trying to sleep!"

Dal did not know all the particulars, but it seems that relationsbetween Jim and Mr. Harbison were rather strained. Bella had leftthe roof and Jim and the Harbison man came face to face in thedoor of the tent. According to Dal, little had been said, butJim, bound by his promise to me, could not explain, and couldonly stammer something about being an old friend of Miss Knowles.And Tom had replied shortly that it was none of his business, butthat there were some things friendship hardly justified, andtried to pass Jim. Jim was instantly enraged; he blocked the doorto the roof and demanded to know what the other man meant. Therewere two or three versions of the answer he got. The generalpurport was that Mr. Harbison had no desire to explain further,and that the situation was forced on him. But if heinsisted--when a man systematically ignored and neglected hiswife for some one else, there were communities where he would betarred and feathered.

"Meaning me?" Jim demanded, apoplectic.

"The remark was a general one," Mr. Harbison retorted, "but ifyou wish to make a concrete application--!"

Dal had gone up just then, and found them glaring at each other,Jim with his hands clenched at his sides, and Mr. Harbison withhis arms folded and very erect. Dal took Jim by the elbow and ledhim downstairs, muttering, and the situation was saved for thetime. But Dal was not optimistic.

"You can do a bit yourself, Kit," he finished. "Look morecheerful, flirt a little. You can do that without trying. TakeMax on for a day or so; it would be charity anyhow. But don't letTom Harbison take into his head that you are grieving over Jim'sneglect, or he's likely to toss him off the roof."

"I have no reason to think that Mr. Harbison cares one way or theother about me," I said primly. "You don't think he's--he's inlove with me, do you, Dal?" I watched him out of the corner of myeye, but he only looked amused.

"In love with you!" he repeated. "Why bless your wicked littleheart, no! He thinks you're a married woman! It's the principleof the thing he's fighting for. If I had as much principle as hehas, I'd--I'd put it out at interest."

Max interrupted us just then, and asked if we knew where Mr.Harbison was.

"Can't find him," he said. "I've got the telephone together andhave enough left over to make another. Where do you supposeHarbison hides the tools? I'm working with a corkscrew and twopalette knives."

I heard nothing more of the trouble that night. Max went to Jimabout it, and Jim said angrily that only a fool would interferebetween a man and his wife--wives. Whereupon Max retorted that afool and his wives were soon parted, and left him. The twoprincipals were coldly civil to each other, and smaller issueswere lost as the famine grew more and more insistent. For famineit was.

They worked the rest of the evening, but the telephone refused torevive and every one was starving. Individually our pride was atlow ebb, but collectively it was still formidable. So we sataround and Jim played Grieg with the soft stops on, and AuntSelina went to bed. The weather had changed, and it was sleeting,but anything was better than the drawing room. I was in a mood tobattle with the elements or to cry--or both--so I slipped out,while Dal was reciting "Give me three grains of corn, mother,"threw somebody's overcoat over my shoulders, put on a man's softhat--Jim's I think--and went up to the roof.

It was dark in the third floor hall, and I had to feel my way tothe foot of the stairs. I went up quietly, and turned the knob ofthe door to the roof. At first it would not open, and I couldhear the wind howling outside. Finally, however, I got the dooropen a little and wormed my way through. It was not entirely darkout there, in spite of the storm. A faint reflection of thestreet lights made it possible to distinguish the outlines of theboxwood plants, swaying in the wind, and the chimneys and thetent. And then--a dark figure disentangled itself from thenearest chimney and seemed to hurl itself at me. I rememberputting out my hands and trying to say something, but the figurecaught me roughly by the shoulders and knocked me back againstthe door frame. From miles away a heavy voice was saying, "SoI've got you!" and then the roof gave from under me, and I wasfloating out on the storm, and sleet was beating in my face, andthe wind was whispering over and over, "Open your eyes, for God'ssake!"

I did open them after a while, and finally I made out that I waslaying on the floor in the tent. The lights were on, and I had acold and damp feeling, and something wet was trickling down myneck.

I seemed to be alone, but in a second somebody came into thetent, and I saw it was Mr. Harbison, and that he had a doublehandful of half-melted snow. He looked frantic and determined,and only my sitting up quickly prevented my getting another snowbath. My neck felt queer and stiff, and I was very dizzy. When hesaw that I was conscious he dropped the snow and stood lookingdown at me.

"Do you know," he said grimly, "that I very nearly choked you todeath a little while ago?"

"It wouldn't surprise me to be told so," I said. "Do I know toomuch, or what is it, Mr. Harbison?" I felt terribly ill, but Iwould not let him see it. "It is queer, isn't it--how we alwaysselect the roof for our little--differences?" He seemed to relaxsomewhat at my gibe.

"I didn't know it was you," he explained shortly. "I was waitingfor--some one, and in the hat you wore and the coat, I mistookyou. That's all. Can you stand?"

"No," I retorted. I could, but his summary manner displeased me.The sequel, however, was rather amazing, for he stooped suddenlyand picked me up, and the next instant we were out in the stormtogether. At the door he stooped and felt for the knob.

"Turn it," he commanded. "I can't reach it."

"I'll do nothing of the kind," I said shrewishly. "Let me down; Ican walk perfectly well."

He hesitated. Then he slid me slowly to my feet, but he did notopen the door at once. "Are you afraid to let me carry you downthose stairs, after--Tuesday night?" he asked, very low. "Youstill think I did that?"

I had never been less sure of it than at that moment, but an impof perversity made me retort, "Yes."

He hardly seemed to hear me. He stood looking down at me as Ileaned against the door frame.

The next moment the door was open, and he was leading me downinto the house. At the foot of the staircase he paused, stillholding my hand, and faced me in the darkness.

"I'm not sorry," he said steadily. "I suppose I ought to be, butI'm not. Only--I want you to know that I was not guilty--before.I didn't intend to now. I am--almost as much surprised as youare."

I was quite unable to speak, but I wrenched my hand loose. Hestepped back to let me pass, and I went down the hall alone.

Chapter XVIII. IT'S ALL MY FAULT

I didn't go to the drawing room again. I went into my own roomand sat in the dark, and tried to be furiously angry, and onlysucceeded in feeling queer and tingly. One thing was absolutelycertain: not the same man, but two different men had kissed me onthe stairs to the roof. It sounds rather horrid anddiscriminating, but there was all the difference in the world.

But then--who had? And for whom had Mr. Harbison been waiting onthe roof? "Did you know that I nearly choked you to death a fewminutes ago?" Then he rather expected to finish somebody in thatway! Who? Jim, probably. It was strange, too, but suddenly Irealized that no matter how many suspicious things I mustered upagainst him--and there were plenty--down in my heart I didn'tbelieve him guilty of anything, except this last and unforgivableoffense. Whoever was trying to leave the house had taken thenecklace, that seemed clear, unless Max was still foolishlytrying to break quarantine and create one of the sensations he sodearly loves. This was a new idea, and some things upheld it, butMax had been playing bridge when I was kissed on the stairs, andthere was still left that ridiculous incident of the comfort.

Bella came up after I had gone to bed, and turned on the light tobrush her hair.

"If I don't leave this mausoleum soon, I'll be carried out," shedeclared. "You in bed, Lollie Mercer and Dal flirting, Annehysterical, and Jim making his will in the den! You will have totake Aunt Selina tonight, Kit; I'm all in."

"If you'll put her to bed, I'll keep her there," I conceded,after some parley.

"You're a dear." Bella came back from the door. "Look here, Kit,you know Jim pretty well. Don't you think he looks ill? Thinner?"

"He's a wreck," I said soberly. "You have a lot to answer for,Bella."

Bella went over to the cheval glass and looked in it. "I avoidhim all I can," she said, posing. "He's awfully funny; he's soafraid I'll think he's serious about you. He can't realize thatfor me he simply doesn't exist."

Well, I took Aunt Selina, and about two o'clock, while I was inmy first sleep, I woke to find her standing beside me, tugging atmy arm.

"There's somebody in the house," she whispered. "Thieves!"

"If they're in they'll not get out tonight," I said.

"I tell you, I saw a man skulking on the stairs," she insisted.

I got up ungraciously enough, and put on my dressing gown. AuntSelina, who had her hair in crimps, tied a veil over her head,and together we went to the head of the stairs. Aunt Selinaleaned far over and peered down.

"He's in the library," she whispered. "I can see a light."

The lust of battle was in Aunt Selina's eye. She girded her robeabout her and began to descend the stairs cautiously. We wentthrough the hall and stopped at the library door. It was empty,but from the den beyond came a hum of voices and the cheerfulglow of fire light. I realized the situation then, but it was toolate.

"Then why did you kiss her in the dining room?" Bella was sayingin her clear, high tones. "You did, didn't you?"

"It was only her hand," Jim, desperately explaining. "I've got topay her some attention, under the circumstances. And I give youmy word, I was thinking of you when I did it." THE WRETCH!

"I am so very lonely," Bella sighed. We could hear the creak ofJim's shirt bosom that showed that he had sighed also. AuntSelina had gripped me by the arm, and I could hear her breathinghard beside me.

"It's only Jim," I whispered. "I--I don't want to hear any more."

But she clutched me firmly, and the next thing we heard wasanother creak, louder and--

"Get up! Get up off your knees this instant!" Bella was sayingfrantically. "Some one might come in."

"Don't send me away," Jim said in a smothered voice. "Every onein the house is asleep, and I love you, dear."

Aunt Selina swallowed hard in the darkness.

"You have no right to make love to me," Bella. "It's--it's highlyimproper, under the circumstances."

And then Jim: "You swallow a camel and stick at a gnat. Why didyou meet me here, if you didn't expect me to make love to you?I've stood for a lot, Bella, but this foolishness will have toend. Either you love me--or you don't. I'm desperate." He drew along, forlorn breath.

"Poor old Jim!" This was Bella. A pause. Then--"Let my handalone!" Also Bella.

"It is MY hand!"--Jim;'s most fatuous tone. "THERE is where youwore my ring. There's the mark still." Sounds of Jim kissingBella's ring finger. "What did you do with it? Throw it away?"More sounds.

Aunt Selina crossed the library swiftly, and again I followed.Bella was sitting in a low chair by the fire, looking at thelogs, in the most exquisite negligee of pink chiffon and ribbon.Jim was on his knees, staring at her adoringly, and holding bothher hands.

"I'll tell you a secret," Bella was saying, looking as coy as sheknew how--which was considerable. "I--I still wear it, on a chainaround my neck."

On a chain around her neck! Bella, who is decollete whenever itis allowable, and more than is proper!

That was the limit of Aunt Selina's endurance. Still holding me,she stepped through the doorway and into the firelight, a fearfulfigure.

Jim saw her first. He went quite white and struggled to get up,smiling a sickly smile. Bella, after her first surprise, wassuperbly indifferent. She glanced at us, raised her eyebrows, andthen looked at the clock.

"More victims of insomnia!" she said. "Won't you come in? Jim,pull up a chair by the fire for your aunt."

Aunt Selina opened her mouth twice, like a fish, before she couldspeak. Then--

"James, I demand that that woman leave the house!" she saidhoarsely.

Bella leaned back and yawned.

"James, shall I go?" she asked amiably.

"Nonsense," Jim said, pulling himself together as best he could."Look here, Aunt Selina, you know she can't go out, and what'smore, I--don't want her to go."

"You--what?" Aunt Selina screeched, taking a step forward. "Youhave the audacity to say such a thing to me!"

Bella leaned over and gave the fire log a punch.

"I was just saying that he shouldn't say such things to me,either," she remarked pleasantly. "I'm afraid you'll take cold,Miss Caruthers. Wouldn't you like a hot sherry flip?"

Aunt Selina gasped. Then she sat down heavily on one of thecarved teakwood chairs.

"He said he loved you; I heard him," she said weakly. "He--hewas going to put his arm around you!"

"Habit!" Jim put in, trying to smile. "You see, Aunt Selina,it's--well, it's a habit I got into some time ago, and I--my armdoes it without my thinking about it."

"Habit!" Aunt Selina repeated, her voice thick with passion. Thenshe turned to me. "Go to your room at once!" she said in her mostawful tone. "Go to your room and leave this--this shocking affairto me."

But if she had reached her limit, so had I. If Jim chose to ruinhimself, it was not my fault. Any one with common sense wouldhave known at least to close the door before he went down on hisknees, no matter to whom. So when Aunt Selina turned on me andpointed in the direction of the staircase, I did not move.

"I am perfectly wide awake," I said coldly. "I shall go to bedwhen I am entirely ready, and not before. And as for Jim'sconduct, I do not know much about the conventions in such cases,but if he wishes to embrace Miss Knowles, and she wants him to,the situation is interesting, but hardly novel."

Aunt Selina rose slowly and drew the folds of her dressing gownaround her, away from the contamination of my touch.

"Do you know what you are saying?" she demanded hoarsely.

"I do." I was quite white and stiff from my knees up, but below Iwas wavery. I glanced at Jim for moral support, but he waslooking idolatrously at Bella. As for her, quite suddenly she haddropped her mask of indifference; her face was strained andanxious, and there were deep circles I had not seen before, underher eyes. And it was Bella who finally threw herself into thebreach--the family breach.

"It is all my fault, Miss Caruthers," she said, stepping betweenAunt Selina and myself. "I have been a blind and wicked woman,and I have almost wrecked two lives."

Two! What of mine?

"You see," she struggled on, against the glint in Aunt Selina'seyes. "I--I did not realize how much I cared, until it was toolate. I did so many things that were cruel and wrong--oh, Jim,Jim!"

She turned and buried her head on his shoulder and cried; realtears. I could hardly believe that it was Bella. And Jim put bothhis arms around her and almost cried, too, and lookednauseatingly happy with the eye he turned to Bella, and scared todeath out of the one he kept on Aunt Selina.

She turned on me, as of course I knew she would.

"That," she said, pointing at Jim and Bella, "that shamefulpicture is due to your own indifference. I am not blind; I haveseen how you rejected all his loving advances." Bella drew awayfrom Jim, but he jerked her back. "If anything in the world wouldreconcile me to divorce, it is this unbelievable situation.James, are you shameless?"

But James was and didn't care who knew it. And as there wasnothing else to do, and no one else to do it, I stood verystraight against the door frame, and told the whole miserablestory from the very beginning. I told how Dal and Jim hadpersuaded me, and how I had weakened and found it was too late,and how Bella had come in that night, when she had no business tocome, and had sat down in the basement kitchen on my hands andalmost turned me into a raving maniac. As I went on I becamefluent; my sense of injury grew on me. I made it perfectly clearthat I hated them all, and that when people got divorces theyought to know their own minds and stay divorced. And at that agreat light broke on Aunt Selina, who hadn't understood untilthat minute.

In view of her principles, she might have been expected to turnon Jim and Bella, and disinherit them, and cast them out,figuratively, with the flaming sword of her tongue. BUT SHE DIDNOT!

She turned on me in the most terrible way, and asked me how Idared to come between husband and wife, because divorce or nodivorce, whom God hath joined together, and so on. And when Jimpicked up his courage in both hands and tried to interfere, shepushed him back with one hand while she pointed the other at meand called me a Jezebel.

Chapter XIX. THE HARBISON MAN

She talked for an hour, having got between me and the door, andshe scolded Jim and Bella thoroughly. But they did not hear it,being occupied with each other, sitting side by side meekly onthe divan with Jim holding Bella's hand under a cushion. She saidthey would have to be very good to make up for all the deception,but it was perfectly clear that it was a relief to her to findthat I didn't belong to her permanently, and as I have saidbefore, she was crazy about Bella.

I sat back in a chair and grew comfortably drowsy in the monotonyof her voice. It was a name that brought me to myself with ajerk.

"Mr. Harbison!" Aunt Selina was saying. "Then bring him down atonce, James. I want no more deception. There is no use cleaning ahouse and leaving a dirty corner."

"It will not be necessary for me to stay and see it swept," Isaid, mustering the rags she had left of my self-respect, andtrying to pass her. But she planted herself squarely before me.

"You can not stir up a dust like this, young woman, and leaveother people to sneeze in it," she said grimly. And I stayed.

I sat, very small, on a chair in a corner. I felt like Jezebel,or whatever her name was, and now the Harbison man was coming,and he was going to see me stripped of my pretensions todomesticity and of a husband who neglected me. He was going tosee me branded a living lie, and he would hate me because I hadput him in a ridiculous position. He was just the sort to resentbeing ridiculous.

Jim brought him down in a dressing gown and a state ofbewilderment. It was plain that the memory of the afternoon stillrankled, for he was very short with Jim and inclined to resentthe whole thing. The clock in the hall chimed half after three asthey came down the stairs, and I heard Mr. Harbison stumble oversomething in the darkness and say that if it was a joke, hewasn't in the humor for it. To which Jim retorted that it wasn'tanything resembling a joke, and for heaven's sake not to walk onhis feet; he couldn't get around the furniture any faster.

At the door of the den Mr. Harbison stopped, blinking in thelight. Then, when he saw us, he tried to back himself and hisdishabille out into the obscurity of the library. But Aunt Selinawas too quick for him.

"Come in," she called, "I want you, young man. It seems thatthere are only two fools in the house, and you are one."

He straightened at that and looked bewildered, but he tried tosmile.

"I thought I was the only one," he said. "Is it possible thatthere is another?"

"I am the other," she announced. I think she expected him to say"Impossible," but, whatever he was, he was never banal.

"Is that so?" he asked politely, trying to be interested and tounderstand at the same time. He had not seen me. He was gazingfixedly at Bella, languishing on the divan and watching him withlowered lids, and he had given Jim a side glance of contempt. Butnow he saw me and he colored under his tan. His neck blushedfuriously, being much whiter than his face. He kept his eyes onmine, and I knew that he was mutely asking forgiveness. But thethought of what was coming paralyzed me. My eyes were glued tohis as they had been that first evening when he had called me"Mrs. Wilson," and after an instant he looked away, and his facewas set and hard.

"It seems that we have all been playing a little comedy, Mr.Harbison," Aunt Selina began, nasally sarcastic. "Or rather, youand I have been the audience. The rest have played."

"I--I don't think I understand," he said slowly. "I have seenvery little comedy."

"It was not well planned," Aunt Selina retorted tartly. "The ideawas good, but the young person who was playing the part of Mrs.Wilson--overacted."

"Oh, come, Aunt Selina, Jim protested, "Kit was coaxed andcajoled into this thing. Give me fits if you like; I deserve allI get. But let Kit alone--she did it for me."

Bella looked over at me and smiled nastily.

"I would stop doing things for Jim, Kit," she said. "It is SOunprofitable."

But Mr. Harbison harked back to Aunt Selina's speech.

"PLAYING the part of Mrs. Wilson!" he repeated. "Do you mean--?

"Exactly. Playing the part. She is not Mrs. Wilson. It seems thatthat honor belonged at one time to Miss Knowles. I believe suchthings are not unknown in New York, only why in the name of sensedoes a man want to divorce a woman and then meet her at twoo'clock in the morning to kiss the place where his own weddingring used to rest?"

Jim fidgeted. Bella was having spasms of mirth to herself, butthe Harbison man did not smile. He stood for a moment looking atthe fire; then he thrust his hands deep into the pockets of hisdressing gown, and stalked over to me. He did not care that theothers were watching and listening.

"Is it true?" he demanded, staring down at me. "You are NOT Mrs.Wilson? You are not married at all? All that about beingneglected--and loathing HIM, and all that on the roof--there wasno foundation of truth?"

I could only shake my head without looking up. There was nodefense to be made. Oh, I deserved the scorn in his voice.

"They--they persuaded you, I suppose, and it was to helpsomebody? It was not a practical joke?"

"No," I rallied a little spirit at that. It had been anything buta joke.

He drew a long breath.

"I think I understand," he said slowly, "but--you could havesaved me something. I must have given you all a great deal ofamusement."

"Oh, no," I protested. "I--I want to tell you--"

But he deliberately left me and went over to the door. There heturned and looked down at Aunt Selina. He was a little white, butthere was no passion in his face.

"Thank you for telling me all this, Miss Caruthers," he saideasily. "Now that you and I know, I'm afraid the others will misstheir little diversion. Good night."

Oh, it was all right for Jim to laugh and say that he was onlyhuffed a little and would be over it by morning. I knew better.There was something queer in his face as he went out. He did noteven glance in my direction. He had said very little, but he hadput me as effectually in the wrong as if he had not kissedme--deliberately kissed me--that very evening, on the roof.

I did not go to sleep again. I lay wretchedly thinking thingsover and trying to remember who Jezebel was, and toward morning Idistinctly heard the knob of the door turn. I mistrusted my ears,however, and so I got up quietly and went over in the darkness.There was no sound outside, but when I put my hand on the knob Ifelt it move under my fingers. The counter pressure evidentlyalarmed whoever it was, for the knob was released and nothingmore happened. But by this time anything so uncomplicated as thefumbling of a knob at night had no power to disturb me. I wentback to bed.

Chapter XX. BREAKING OUT IN A NEW PLACE

Hunger roused everybody early the next morning, Friday. LeilaMercer had discovered a box of bonbons that she had forgotten,and we divided them around. Aunt Selina asked for the candiedfruit and got it--quite a third of the box. We gathered in thelower hall and on the stairs and nibbled nauseating sweets whileMr. Harbison examined the telephone.

He did not glance in my direction. Betty and Dal were helpinghim, and he seemed very cheerful. Max sat with me on the stairs.Mr. Harbison had just unscrewed the telephone box from the walland was squinting into it, when Bella came downstairs. It was herfirst appearance, but as she was always late, nobody noticed.When she stopped, just above us on the stairs, however, we lookedup, and she was holding to the rail and trembling perceptibly.

"Mr. Harbison, will you--can you come upstairs?" she asked. Hervoice was strained, almost reedy, and her lips were white.

Mr. Harbison stared up at her, with the telephone box in hishands.

"Why--er--certainly," he said, "but, unless it's very important,I'd like to fix this talking machine. We want to make a foodrecord."

"I'd like to break a food record," Max put in, but Bella createda diversion by sitting down suddenly on the stair just above us,and burying her face in her handkerchief.

"Jim is sick," she said, with a sob. "He--he doesn't wantanything to eat, and his head aches. He--said for me--to go awayand let him die!"

Dal dropped the hammer immediately, and Lollie Mercer satpetrified, with a bonbon halfway to her mouth. For, of course, itwas unexpected, finding sentiment of any kind in Bella, and noneof them knew about the scene in the den in the small hours of themorning.

"Sick!" Aunt Selina said, from a hall chair. "Sick! Where?"

"All over," Bella quavered. "His poor head is hot, and he'sthirsty, but he doesn't want anything but water."

"Great Scott!" Dal said suddenly. "Suppose he should--Bella, areyou telling us ALL his symptoms?"

Bella put down her handkerchief and got up. From her position onthe stairs she looked down on us with something of her oldhaughty manner.

"If he is ill, you may blame yourselves, all of you," she saidcruelly. "You taunted him with being--fat, and laughed at him,until he stopped eating the things he should eat. And he has beenexercising--on the roof, until he has worn himself out. Andnow--he is ill. He--he has a rash."

Everybody jumped at that, and we instinctively moved away fromBella. She was quite cold and scornful by that time.

"A rash!" Max exclaimed. "What sort of rash?"

"I did not see it," Bella said with dignity, and turning, shewent up the stairs.

There was a great deal of excitement, and nobody except Mr.Harbison was willing to go near Jim. He went up at once withBella, while Max and Dal sat cravenly downstairs and wondered ifwe would all take it, and Anne told about a man she knew who hadit, and was deaf and dumb and blind when he recovered.

Mr. Harbison came down after a while, and said that the rash wasthere, right enough, and that Jim absolutely refused to bequarantined; that he insisted that he always got a rash fromearly strawberries and that if he DID have anything, since theywere so touchy he hoped they would all get it. If they locked himin he would kick the door down.

We had a long conference in the hall, with Bella sitting red-eyedand objecting to every suggestion we made. And finally wearranged to shut Jim up in one of the servants' bedrooms with asheet wrung out of disinfectant hung over the door. Bella saidshe would sit outside in the hall and read to him through theclosed door, so finally he gave a grudging consent. But he was inan awful humor. Max and Dal put on rubber gloves and helped himover, and they said afterward that the way he talked was fearful.And there was a telephone in the maid's room, and he kept askingfor things every five minutes.

When the doctor came he said it was too early to tell positively,and he ordered him liquid diet and said he would be back thatevening.

Which--the diet--takes me back to the famine. After they hadmoved Jim, Mr. Harbison went back to the telephone, and foundeverything as it should be. So he followed the telephone wire,and the rest followed him. I did not; he had systematicallyignored me all morning, after having dared to kiss me the nightbefore. And any other man I know, after looking at me the way hehad looked a dozen times, would have been at least reasonablyglad to find me free and unmarried. But it was clear that he wasnot; I wondered if he was the kind of man who always makes loveto the other man's wife and runs like mad when she is left awidow, or gets a divorce.

And just when I had decided that I hated him, and that there wasone man I knew who would never make love to a woman whom hethought married and then be very dignified and aloof when hefound she wasn't, I heard what was wrong with the telephone wire.

It had been cut! Cut through with a pair of silver manicurescissors from the dressing table in Bella's room, where AuntSelina slept! The wire had been clipped where it came into thehouse, just under a window, and the scissors still lay on thesill.

It was mysterious enough, but no one was interested in themystery just then. We wanted food, and wanted it at once. Mr.Harbison fixed the wire, and the first thing we did, of course,was to order something to eat. Aunt Selina went to bed just afterluncheon with indigestion, to the relief of every one in thehouse. She had been most unpleasant all morning.

When she found herself ill, however, she insisted on havingBella, and that made trouble at once. We found Bella with hercheek against the door into Jim's room, looking maudlin while heshouted love messages to her from the other side. At first sherefused to stir, but after Anne and Max had tried and failed, therest of us went to her in a body and implored her. We said AuntSelina was in awful shape--which she was, as to temper--and thatshe had thrown a mustard plaster at Anne, which was true.

So Bella went, grumbling, and Jim was a maniac. We had notthought it would be so bad for Bella, but Aunt Selina fell asleepsoon after she took charge, holding Bella's hand, and slept forthree hours and never let go!

About two that afternoon the sun came out, and the rest of uswent to the roof. The sleet had melted and the air was fairlywarm. Two housemaids dusting rugs on the top of the next housecame over and stared at us, and somebody in an automobile down onRiverside Drive stood up and waved at us. It was very cheerfuland hopelessly lonely.

I stayed on the roof after the others had gone, and for some timeI thought I was alone. After a while, I got a whiff of smoke, andthen I saw Mr. Harbison far over in the corner, one foot on theparapet, moodily smoking a pipe. He was gazing out over theriver, and paying no attention to me. This was natural,considering that I had hardly spoken to him all day.

I would not let him drive me away, so I sat still, and it grewdarker and colder. He filled his pipe now and then, but he neverlooked in my direction. Finally, however, as it grew very dusk,he knocked the ashes out and came toward me.

"I am going to make a request, Miss McNair," he said evenly."Please keep off the roof after sunset. There are--reasons." Ihad risen and was preparing to go downstairs.

"Unless I know the reasons, I refuse to do anything of the kind,"I retorted. He bowed.

"Then the door will be kept locked," he rejoined, and opened itfor me. He did not follow me, but stood watching until I wasdown, and I heard him close the roof door firmly behind me.

Chapter XXI. A BAR OF SOAP

Late that evening Betty Mercer and Dallas were writing verses ofcondolence to be signed by all of us and put under the door intoJim's room when Bella came running down the stairs.

Dal was reading the first verse when she came. "Listen to this,Bella," he said triumphantly:

"There was a fat artist named Jas,Who cruelly called his friends nas.When, altho' shut up tight,He broke out over nightWith a rash that is maddening, he clas."

Then he caught sight of Bella's face as she stood in the doorway,and stopped.

"Jim is delirious!" she announced tragically. "You shut him inthere all alone and now he's delirious. I'll never forgive any ofyou."

"Delirious!" everybody exclaimed.

"He was sane enough when I took him his chicken broth," Mr.Harbison said. "He was almost fluent."

"He is stark, staring crazy," Bella insisted hysterically. "I--Ilocked the door carefully when I went down to my dinner, and whenI came up it--it was unlocked, and Jim was babbling on the bed,with a sheet over his face. He--he says the house is haunted andhe wants all the men to come up and sit in the room with him."

"Not on your life," Max said. "I am young, and my career has onlybegun. I don't intend to be cut off in the flower of my youth.But I'll tell you what I will do; I'll take him a drink. I cantie it to a pole or something."

But Mr. Harbison did not smile. He was thoughtful for a minute.Then:

"I don't believe he is delirious," he said quietly, "and Iwouldn't be surprised if he has happened on something that--willbe of general interest. I think I will stay with him tonight."

After that, of course, none of the others would confess that hewas afraid, so with the South American leading, they all wentupstairs. The women of the party sat on the lower steps andlistened, but everything was quiet. Now and then we could hearthe sound of voices, and after a while there was a rapid slammingof doors and the sound of some one running down to the secondfloor. Then quiet again.

None of us felt talkative. Bella had followed the men up and hadbeen put out, and sat sniffling by herself in the den. AuntSelina was working over a jig-saw puzzle in the library, anddeclaring that some of it must be lost. Anne and Leila Mercerwere embroidering, and Betty and I sat idle, our hands in ourlaps. The whole atmosphere of the house was mysterious. Anne toldover again of the strange noises the night her necklace wasstolen. Betty asked me about the time when the comfort slippedfrom under my fingers. And when, in the midst of the story, thetelephone rang, we all jumped and shrieked.

In an hour or so they sent for Flannigan, and he went upstairs.He came down again soon, however, and returned with somethingover his arm that looked like a rope. It seemed to be made of allkinds of things tied together, trunk straps, clothesline, bedsheets, and something that Flannigan pointed to with rage andsaid he hadn't been able to keep his clothes on all day. Herefused to explain further, however, and trailed the nondescriptarticle up the stairs. We could only gaze after him and wonderwhat it all meant.

The conclave lasted far into the night. The feminine contingentwent to bed, but not to sleep. Some time after midnight, Mr.Harbison and Max went downstairs and I could hear them rattlingaround testing windows and burglar alarms. But finally every onesettled down and the rest of the night was quiet.

Betty Mercer came into my room the next morning, Sunday, and saidAnne Brown wanted me. I went over at once, and Anne was sittingup in bed, crying. Dal had slipped out of the room at daylight,she said, and hadn't come back. He had thought she was asleep,but she wasn't, and she knew he was dead, for nothing ever madeDal get up on Sunday before noon.

There was no one moving in the house, and I hardly knew what todo. It was Betty who said she would go up and rouse Mr. Harbisonand Max, who had taken Jim's place in the studio. She started outbravely enough, but in a minute we heard her flying back. Annegrew perfectly white.

"He's lying on the upper stairs!" Betty cried, and we all ranout. It was quite true. Dal was lying on the stairs in abathrobe, with one of Jim's Indian war clubs in his hand. And hewas sound asleep.

He looked somewhat embarrassed when he roused and saw us standingaround. He said he was going to play a practical joke on somebodyand fell asleep in the middle of it. And Anne said he wasn't evenan intelligent liar, and went back to bed in a temper. But Bettycame in with me, and we sat and looked at each other and didn'tsay much. The situation was beyond us.

The doctor let Jim out the next day, there having been nothingthe matter with him but a stomach rash. But Jim was changed; hemooned around Bella, of course, as before, but he was abstractedat times, and all that day--Sunday--he wandered off by himself,and one would come across him unexpectedly in the basement oralong some of the unused back halls.

Aunt Selina held service that morning. Jim said that he alwayshad a prayer book, but that he couldn't find anything with somany people in the house. So Aunt Selina read some religiouspoetry out of the newspapers, and gave us a valuable talk onDeception versus Honesty, with me as the illustration.

Almost everybody took a nap after luncheon. I stayed in the denand read Ibsen, and felt very mournful. And after Hedda had shotherself, I lay down on the divan and cried a little--over Hedda;she was young and it was such a tragic ending--and then I fellasleep.

When I wakened Mr. Harbison was standing by the table, and heheld my book in his hands. In view of the armed neutralitybetween us, I expected to see him bow to me curtly, turn on hisheel and leave the room. Indeed, considering his state of mindthe night before, I should hardly have been surprised if he hadthrown Hedda at my head. (This is not a pun. I detest them.) Butinstead, when he heard me move he glanced over at me and evensmiled a little.

"She wasn't worth it," he said, indicating the book.

"Worth what?"

"Your tears. You were crying over it, weren't you?"

"She was very unhappy," I asserted indifferently. "She wasmarried and she loved some one else."

"Do you really think she did?" he asked. "And even so, was that areason?"

"The other man cared for her; he may not have been able to helpit."

"But he knew that she was married," he said virtuously, and thenhe caught my eye and he saw the analogy instantly, for he coloredhotly and put down the book.

"Most men argue that way," I said. "They argue by the book,and--they do as they like."

He picked up a Japanese ivory paper weight from the table, andstood balancing it across his finger.

"You are perfectly right," he said at last. "I deserve it all. Mygrievance is at myself. Your--your beauty, and the fact that Ithought you were unhappy, put me--beside myself. It is not anexcuse; it is a weak explanation. I will not forget myself